defined as such
by free-pirate
Summary: Wee!Chesters. Sammy doesn't have a mommy, but he has a Dean, which is even better.


**A/N:** Written for myjadedhavok LJ for spn_j2_xmas LJ.

Not mine. I just like to play.

Later, Sam will suspect that the only reason he actually got signed up to attend kindergarten was because Dean pressed the issue with Dad. He dozed on the couch all night, waited for the rumble of Dad's car as he returned from a 'business trip' and pressed the papers into his tired hands.

Sam is sure that, if it were up to Dad, he wouldn't have started school at all. He would have forgotten or said it was unimportant in light of everything else – and, at that point, he still wasn't willing to tell Sam was 'everything else' was. It was Dean who, next morning, blearily handed the registration papers over the counter and made up excuses for their absent father.

In later years, it would become a trend. Dean still thought Dad walked on water and would continue to actually believe it (if to a lesser degree) until the man died. But at the wise old age of four-and-a-half, Sam accepted it as fact with no question. The sky was blue, the sun was hot, and Dean was the one who took care of him.

He actually started school at the beginning of the next week. Dean laced up his shoes, helped him with his backpack and made sure his jacket was on correctly.

"You gotta be nice to your teacher and the other kids," he said as they walked to the school. It was about four blocks from the shack they were renting, and Sam scuffed his shoes along the sidewalk. He tried to pretend he wasn't nervous, because Dean didn't cry at all on his first day of school (Sam remembers it distantly), and he's expected to be okay with it. After all, if Dean went through all the trouble of making sure he could go, he was going to go.

"And if the other kids make fun of you, I'll beat 'em up."

Sam's head shot up and he looked at Dean with wide eyes. He didn't know that other kids could be mean like that, but now that he did…

He had to try twice as hard not to cry.

They stopped just outside the kindergarten hallway. Sam grabbed Dean's hand and squeezed as hard as he could. Dean made a face. "C'mon, man," he said, trying to shake Sam's hand off. "It's okay. I'll be back to get you when it's over."

Even as unconvinced as Sam was, he took a deep breath and stepped into the hallway.

*

His teacher was nice. She smiled a lot and talked to him like he was a kid, which Sam didn't know how to take. He wasn't used to being treated like he was actually four-and-a-half.

Which was one of the first problems he encountered with school: he was younger than almost everyone there. Sam wanted to ask about it, but he didn't want to discuss it with his teacher; he'd save it until he got home and ask Dean about it.

It actually went pretty okay, he thought. At lunch time, his teacher told them to take out their lunches, and Sam dug around in his bag but couldn't find anything. Dean must have forgot to pack it. It was okay, though; Sam really wasn't all that hungry. Instead, he continued trying to color inside the lines on the paper they were supposed to do.

His teacher put a hand on his shoulder and asked, in her honey-sweet child-voice, where his lunch was, and didn't his mom pack it for him?

Sam blinked up at her. The thought honestly hadn't occurred to him… moms did that stuff? They packed lunches and made sure you had 'em in the morning? "No," he said, and frowned. He wanted to tell her he didn't have one, that his mom died a long time ago and he couldn't remember her, but those were the kinds of things they kept to themselves.

Dean would be proud.

She went to her desk, pulled open a drawer on the bottom and brought back a brown paper sack. "Here, sweetie," she said as she placed it on the table in front of him. He couldn't identify the look in her brown eyes, but later he'd recognize it for what it was: pity, plain and simple.

*

Faithful as ever, Dean was there to retrieve him at two-thirty.

"So, kiddo," he said, as they started walking. "How was your first day?"

Sam frowned down at the sidewalk. "I don't like it. I think you should come with me tomorrow."

"What happened?" Dean's tone was suddenly very serious, like he got sometimes with Dad, and Sam couldn't stop talking once he started.

"My teacher talks to me like I'm little and the other kids look at me funny."

"You _are_ little," Dean grinned, and Sam tried to smile back.

"Well, yeah, but she doesn't… I don't like her. And I didn't have my lunch and she looked at me weird."

Dean stopped walking. Sam took a few more steps before he realized that Dean wasn't next to him.

"Crap," he said, and Sam grimaced. He didn't like it when Dean cursed. "I'm sorry, Sammy. I forgot, 'cause I get my lunches at school…"

"It's okay. I wasn't really hungry." He scuffed his toes along the sidewalk again, stuck his hands in his pockets because he didn't know what to do with them.

"I won't forget again," Dean vowed, and Sam smiled this time, genuinely.

*

When they got back to the apartment, Dean locked the door and started making sandwiches in the tiny kitchen. Sam turned the TV on and watched the first cartoon he could find.

"You got homework?" Dean asked, and climbed down off the box he used to reach the counter.

"No," Sam said, but he wasn't really listening to the TV anymore. "Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"What do moms do?"

There was a short silence, followed by a sigh. "Don't ask that, Sammy."

Sam swung his feet, hitting them against the couch as hard as he could. "Do they do what you do? I heard kids talking about them. Do they make lunches and tie shoes and wash clothes?"

He looked around, trying to find Dean, but he must have been in the other room. The muffled response came through the wall, "Yeah, Sam, I guess they do that."

*

Sam thought about it that night, as Dean was getting stuff ready for school in the morning.

A mom was a foreign creature to him. He'd seen one picture of his own; she was pretty and blonde and smiling as she held baby Dean. No one ever told her what happened to her, only that she died. When he asked, a while ago, what 'die' meant, Dean refused to tell him.

He asked Dad when he came back from a business trip, and Dad looked around the room, glanced at Dean, and then told him that it meant someone went away forever and couldn't be with you anymore. It seemed pretty bad.

Sam looked up at the ceiling, at the shadows from passing cars as they made shapes. So he didn't have a mom. He had a Dean, though, and Dean did all the things a mom should do. Dean took care of him, made sure Dad did the stuff he was supposed to, tied his shoes and laid his clothes out at night so he knew what to wear.

Dean taught him stuff, important stuff, stuff that moms probably wouldn't know.

So maybe… maybe Dean was better. Maybe Dean was better because he tried, and maybe moms were made to be perfect. Dean was perfect, even when he forgot to make Sam lunch, because he tried to be.

Sam stayed awake until Dean snuck into the room an hour later and slid into the tiny bed next to him. Even though Dad said Dean could sleep in his bed when he wasn't here, he never did because he knew that Sam got nightmares sometimes. A mom would probably go ahead and sleep in the next room.

Dean understood.

"Dean?" Sam muttered, and snuggled up close to his big brother's heat.

"Yeah, Sammy?"

"Love you."

Sam could hear Dean's grin as he rolled over, ruffled Sam's still-wet hair and muttered, "Love you too."

*

The next day at school, Sam's teacher raised an eyebrow when he pulled out his lunch.

"Your mom didn't forget today, huh?"

"Nah," Sam said, and smiled down into his haphazardly-made sandwich. "My brother made it."

He didn't say _Dean's better than a mom_, even if he wanted to. The other kids might want Dean to make their lunches and tie their shoes, and Sam wanted to keep his big brother all to himself.


End file.
